July 24, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, listener Tim Hennessey talks about his viral Facebook post that exemplifies the everyday goodness in this country.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American Stories and up next
a story from one of our listeners. And by the way,
we love our listener's story, send him to our American
Stories dot com. They are truly some of our favorites.
When there was a break in the deep freeze that
swept across Texas in February of twenty twenty one, Tim
Hennessy and his wife deb piled into his jeep and
(00:32):
headed for h Eb, a beloved grocery store chain for
many Texans. It has almost a cult like following. Tim
shared his story on his Facebook page and it immediately
went viral. Tim, who's a big fan of our show,
contacted us to see if we'd think our listeners would
want to hear it, and we of course said yes.
(00:54):
Here's Tim with the story he and his wife entitled
the Heart of America.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Very quick background.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Originally from Chicago and we lived there many years and
then we moved to My wife and I dad moved
to California in nineteen ninety three for an opportunity and
it seemed like California. It was kind of like the
heyday for California. Things are moving, Things were pretty good
for us there. We lived there twenty three years and
then three or four years ago, my kids decided to
(01:24):
move to Houston and they basically said, you know, we
just can't afford to live in California. The best we
could do is get an apartment for twenty five hundred
dollars a month, and it was just too expensive and
they didn't want to be house poor. So they moved
to Texas and tore our heart out, really honestly, and
we we found ourselves sitting in California at home. We
(01:47):
still have a son who was in California. We found
one day we found ourselves sitting there, going, what are
we doing here? We have a grandson in Houston, and
we kind of, you know, we love California, the beauty,
the weather. It's kind of how there's very few places
in the entire world you're going to get that kind
of beauty and weather and stuff. And we thought it's
(02:07):
the best at both worlds. We moved to Texas. We
have a lot more freedom than we have in California.
We can save a lot more money before we retire,
and we get to see our grandkids every single day.
So a few years ago we decided to to move
and you know, I find people are nice everywhere you live.
(02:27):
You could, you know, I think it's where you focus on.
There's good people everywhere, but there's a it's a level
of niceness in Texas. The people that kind of struck
us as soon as we moved here. It's almost like,
why are you so nice to us? What's your agenda?
And it's it's a different kind of nice. And so
(02:48):
that kind of niceness we recognized everywhere. Yes they're no here, yes, ma'am, No, ma'am.
And there's and the people at wherever where you go
are just a different level of nice. So right around
February twenty twenty one, somewhere in there, twenty twenty one,
it was a historic storm here in Texas. Fifteen degrees
are below closer to zero a couple days for a
(03:11):
whole week, and Texas is just not built for that.
When I live in Chicago, they had snowplows, they had
salt for the roads. Here they're not built for They
don't have that kind of stuff because it's rarely that cold.
Usually maybe gets down to thirty degrees. Power was going
out for four days off and on every couple hours.
It was out hardest powers when the water went out,
(03:33):
because you're you start thinking to yourself, Okay, this is
getting real. Now how long is this water going to
be out? Is this a day, two days, three days
a week?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Could you start thinking these stories of people don't have
water for a month. So in between that, we had
snow on one of the days. And when you get
some snow that goes over the ice, it makes it
a little bit more easy traction wise, because we didn't
want to drive anywhere. The roads were literally impassable. You
couldn't go anywhere. You could even walk on the roads,
you'd fall down. So we got some snow. So my
(04:03):
wifie said, well we got a little bit of a break.
Let's go to the store. Let's get a few things
for some friends. We decided to drive to a local
store here called AGB. HB is like the dominating grocery
chain in Texas, and so we pulled in. People were
lining up. We got on the line, about fifty people
(04:24):
we made the best were probably outside for about twenty minutes.
Finally the line started moving. We got in the store
and about ten fifteen minutes into shopping, the lights went
out and you literally could hear it go, oh, here
we go again, and so.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
We looked around at each other.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
It's like, well, let's just keep shopping until we're told
not to shop. In the back of my mind, I
kept thinking they're going to come along pretty soon and
make us leave. I was hoping they weren't just going
to kick us out and we have to leave our
stuff there, but I kind of half expected that. So
we shopped for about ten fifteen minutes and my wife
was going to oh, she said, oh, I forgot the bananas.
(05:02):
So we start going that way. That's when one of
the employees came along and said, hey, folks, would you
mind going to the front and we'll get you checked
out as quickly as we can. We have a process
for this, so don't worry. We'll get you out here
as quickly as we can. So of course, we go
up and we get in line. There's probably ten, I
would say ten to twelve people in front of us.
(05:24):
Most of the people had full baskets. Bunch of people
behind us. I don't know, maybe ten twelve. I didn't
really look, but there's a ton. So I thought this
is going to take a long time. Because there was
about fifteen other lines. People going from the front to
the back of the store because everybody's checking out at
the same time. So I'm in my mind. I even
said to deb my wife, I said, well, this is
going to take a long time. Are they going to
(05:44):
get calculators out? What are they going to do? We
weren't sure, so I thought, well, maybe we're just waiting
for the power to kick back in and maybe they
have a generator. So maybe ten twenty minutes somewhere in
there went by.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
We didn't. We barely moved.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I don't even know if we moved up one cart,
and then all of a sudden, within a few minutes
we started moving. And as we moved up, a woman's
employee says, do you guys have any alcohol? Like looking
at our carts, and I said no, but if you're
giving out drinks, I could use one right now, you know,
just kind of make it fine. I like to have
fun with people. And so within a few minutes, I
(06:17):
mean literally just a couple of minutes, we were ushered
to an open aisle and they waved us over.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
We go over there.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
My wife starts putting stuff on the canor belt and
the woman said, oh, don't put anything up there, we
won't be able to bag anything today. So I thought
it was kind of weird, Okay, So we pushed our
car to the end and she looked at us, looked
at our groceries and kind of motioned with her arm
like go home and be safe, you know, drive home safe.
(06:44):
And we looked at her like I even said, who,
how do we pay? And as I'm saying this, I'm
watching all these carts go out the door, and it
kind of hit us like, wow, they're literally sending us
home out asking us who we are, looking at what
we had, counting anything, expecting anything from us, And I
(07:08):
turned to my wife. She's tearing up. It was just
this wonderful gesture of this company. Because we always want
to bash companies that they're all for profit. This company
is literally letting two hundred people walk out of this
store without paying a single dime, without asking who you
voted for, what's your social status, who you are, nothing, because,
(07:32):
quite frankly, because you're a customer. It's just an amazing thing.
So we started leaving and we're like, this is unbelievable.
And we get to the door and there's about eight
to ten of their employees standing there and kind of
greeting us. So it felt like a wedding, like okay,
for everybody, go home, be safe. They're waving at us,
(07:53):
and it became like a festive mood. And I turned
at the edge of the door and I said, oh,
wait a minute, I forgot to fill at Mignon, you know,
And they all busted out laugh and they knew what
it was what I was saying.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Of course, you know, part of you thinks, man, I
should have got to flay Mignon, you know, but of
course we're all laughing about it. And we started getting
the parking lot and it was very hard to maneuver
the carts because of bumps of ice and snow, and
without bags in the carts, stuff started falling out of
people's carts and.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
You could see everybody helping each other.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Holding on to other people's carts in front of behind them,
helping them. And we all do this every day, but
in that moment, it felt like I want to do
even more. It's just, you know, giving that that act
when someone gives you an act of kindness and generosity
for no reason. First, you feel, I don't know, a
little guilty because I never felt entitled, but I felt
(08:47):
a little not guilty. I don't know what the right
word is, but he felt like, Wow, we didn't deserve that.
Can I give to somebody else who made who they
need help?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You know?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
So with that in mind, I got back to my car.
We started driving home. We were talking about, Wow, you
don't see that every day, you know, a store like
HGB just did that for its customers. So I told
my wife, I said, I'm going to write about this
story and I'm going to post it on Facebook and
just share with a few of my friends.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And you've been listening to Tim Hennessy tell the story
of an experience in a grocery store when we come
back to Texans here on our American Stories and we
(09:39):
continue with our American stories. And when we last left off,
Tim Hennessy was about to post his experience in that
grocery chain on Facebook, and let's pick up what's him.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
This last year, we've gotten bombarded with nothing but bad news,
and maybe even the last decade or two, it just
seemed like we get more and more bad news because
I just saw that as this is the America that
I know and love, and that's what I was going
to tell the story. This is the America I know
and love, not the stuff you see in the newspaper,
(10:11):
on the news all day, you know, all the time.
So and my wife was thinking about it for a second.
She said, why don't you just call it the heart
of America? And I just liked what she said. It
just hit me at I said, you know what, that's
what I'm going to call it because it kind of
is more succinct.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
This is the heart of America. It truly is.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
So then she said, you know, I took tim I
took a picture and I said you did. She goes, yeah,
I didn't really want people to know who's taking it,
and she said, I just want. Through her tears, she said,
I'm I just captured that moment for us. It was
just a unique thing to see. I said, well, send
me that picture. I'll include that with the post. And
I literally just wrote it. I actually gave it to
(10:52):
my wife in a word document. She's my editor. Because
I'm not the best speller. I hate to admit that
I read voraciously, but I and that spell for nothing.
Thank you God for a spell check, Like the word
separate forget it. I put an EAI. I don't know
if it's e in the middle aar. Anyway, I'm getting
off topic here, so she's edited for me and I
(11:14):
just posted it and then I think our power went
out again a little while later, and then we woke
up on Wednesday after I posted it, and then sometime
in the middle of the day, I thought, well, we
checked my Facebook post just to see, if you know,
a couple hundred my friends what they thought of that story.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And I thought, oh my, how does this happen?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
At that time, it was like twelve or thirteen thousand shares,
a couple thousand comments, and probably ten thousand likes, And
I'm like, oh, I don't have that many friends.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
How does this happen? How does this happen?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
And I actually called a friend of my daughters who
works for Facebook, and I said, Jesse, what the heck?
And she says him, what the heck? I said, well,
you're supposed to you're the expert. Don't tell me what
the heck? How does this happen? And she said, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Tim.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I think the story hit a nerve at the right time.
I think people needed to hear good news through all this.
So then then I got worried. Okay, I did not
expect this to go like this. I was literally sharing
with a few friends.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
So I got worried.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
So I called the store said have you heard about
a Facebook post about your store going viral? He goes, yes,
we did. I said, is it okay? And it was
a manager. I asked for it, and I said is
it okay? Because I didn't really I didn't know this
was going to happen. I didn't want to get anybody
in trouble. He said, no, it's all good, sir. I
got the impression without him saying that that is a
(12:47):
very positive thing for that store.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
So, but I wanted to call their corporate office too,
for a couple of reasons. One I wanted to double
check that it was okay, and two I wanted to
find out what their chair were. And so I got
a whold of somebody there and they said the local
food Bank is one of their charities, and also they
directed me to their website, and she also mentioned this
(13:11):
place called Lady Lodge. It's a family Christian based camp
where people go and the donations help pay for families
who can't afford it, and there's no cell service or internet.
It's literally you're going camping and it's a few hours
away from us here in Texas. And so my wife
and I wrote checks to both of them for more
than what we would have paid in groceries, because we
(13:31):
felt like this was such a great gesture. It was
our way of giving back somehow, right. But the next
day that story just kept getting bigger and bigger, and
it was over thirty thousand shares, thirty two hundred comments,
more likes than I could ever count. And then the
phone started ringing. I got text messages, email messages, direct
(13:53):
messages from various news organizations, CNN, Watching Post, Fox News, NBC,
People Magazine, basically who's who of media. And then I
still got a little bit nervous about it because I thought, well,
I don't want this company. This is a very private company,
very humble company. They do a lot for the community.
(14:15):
HIV there's a lot. They're almost always wheneber there's a disaster.
They're almost always the first there for water or food supplies.
They're very generous company in Texas, family oriented. And so
I called them one more time. I said, you know,
I've been doing these interviews. I don't know if anybody
saw it, But have somebody call me back and let
me know if you want me to continue or stop,
(14:38):
because I'll stop today because it's not about me. I
just wanted to not necessarily promote the store, but just
to show the goodness that there is in this country,
because there's a lot of good things in this country.
We see it every single day. We see it all
across this country. We see it in our neighborhoods. How
many of us go out every day we help somebody,
(15:00):
But it doesn't make the news because that's what that's
what we're supposed to do. That's what God wants us
to do. That's why we're here. We're here to be
good to each other.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
And so they called me back, one of their corporate
spokespeople call me back. I don't know if it's the
next day or that same day, I can't remember. And
we talked for about a half hour on the phone,
and he said, Tim, he goes, let me just tell
you something. He goes, We're not going to stop what
you're doing. We love what you're doing. When we're getting
a lot of phone calls right now about if that
(15:31):
story is true or not, and all we do is
tell them, yes, it happened. Then that's as far as
they go. And basically, because they don't want to toot
their own horn. They could easily they could easily point
to their back and go, look at the name of
my back of my jersey. This is a GB aren't
we great? But that's not what they want to do.
(15:51):
That's how great of a company they are. Oh, I
wanted to add one more thing. So and this is
for my wife's I have to give her credit. This
is my wife, Debbie. I have to give her credit
for this because.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
This is her.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
She says this all the time, and that's why she
took that picture too. She says this following phrase. God
only needs a moment, right, God only needs a moment?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And and and.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The phrase that I one of my favorite quotes that
I kind of live my life by is from Albert Einstein,
and it goes like this, live your life is if
there are no miracles, or everything is a miracle. I
probably boss that quote will be nervous right now, but
so I live it as if everything's a miracle. And
(16:47):
when you look for good things, you look for the
miracles in life. It may seem silly to go, Wow,
you think it's a miracle. This guy let everything, these
people walk out the store. I think it is. That's
why we look or the moments. And again I got
to give my wife credit for a God only needs
a moment. You look for these these things. You see
him everywhere. They don't get reported all the time, but
(17:09):
we see him. And I'll give you an example of
another moment or a miracle happened during the same week
I saw this story. It was in San Antonio, Texas.
I believe it was a seven eleven and there's either
the owner or the manager who wrote this on Twitter.
And she went to her store one morning and all
(17:33):
the water that's left out outside on Palletts was missing.
She said, over one hundred cases of water we're missing.
And she thought, well, I guess people needed water because
we're having issues. So she understood it, and she goes
to open the door of the seven eleven and they're
(17:53):
on the floor was six hundred and twenty dollars in
all kind of different denominational bills. So in other words,
it wasn't just one person who just put in six
hundred twenty dollars.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
They put they slid through the slit of.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
The door, not like a mail slot, you know, like
some doors a mail the slit of the door. They
slid in six hundred and twenty dollars in ones, twos, tens, twenties,
and there's a picture of it. That is a miracle. Right,
So we see these all over the place. And I'll
give you a couple other examples. I don't know if
it's a great example, but in my neighborhood and probably
(18:29):
all across Texas, people were out walking driving when we
could going house to house checking on people.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Did you know you could melt snow and ice to
flush to put in the back of your troldt to flush.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
You I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Okay, great, And we see this everywhere all over this country.
Like I said, thousand times a day. How many times
have you heard of a police officer and this happens
all the time. Maybe somebody stand in front of them,
doesn't have enough money to pay for their food or whatever,
and that officer, they're not gonna make the most money
in the world, will take out their own money and
pay for that.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Every once in a will we hear that story. But that
happens all the time, those kind of things, So miracles
do happen every single day. This world is a miracle,
and we're all here, and the sun rise every day
and sets every day. We take it for granted, but
that's still a miracle.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
When I go turn the lights on now, I think
twice about it, because we didn't have it for a
few days. When I turned a faucet on, I think
twice about it now. A week ago it was like
not even in your mind. Those are miracles if you
think about it that way. That some waters come from
some plant, it's treated. The electricity is coming from someplace.
(19:44):
It comes into my place and it gives me light,
gives me the power of my refrigerator, my TV, my stove,
all these things. We take it for granted. We have
delegated so many things in our lives. Is just mundane.
But they're miracles.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And you've been listening to ten Hennessy The Heart of America,
a story of the Hennessy family and H. E. B.
A grocery chain that wanted nothing, no credit, no adulation.
They just did the right thing. This great story here
on our American Stories
And we continue with our American Stories and up next
a story from one of our listeners. And by the way,
we love our listener's story, send him to our American
Stories dot com. They are truly some of our favorites.
When there was a break in the deep freeze that
swept across Texas in February of twenty twenty one, Tim
Hennessy and his wife deb piled into his jeep and
(00:32):
headed for h Eb, a beloved grocery store chain for
many Texans. It has almost a cult like following. Tim
shared his story on his Facebook page and it immediately
went viral. Tim, who's a big fan of our show,
contacted us to see if we'd think our listeners would
want to hear it, and we of course said yes.
(00:54):
Here's Tim with the story he and his wife entitled
the Heart of America.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Very quick background.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Originally from Chicago and we lived there many years and
then we moved to My wife and I dad moved
to California in nineteen ninety three for an opportunity and
it seemed like California. It was kind of like the
heyday for California. Things are moving, Things were pretty good
for us there. We lived there twenty three years and
then three or four years ago, my kids decided to
(01:24):
move to Houston and they basically said, you know, we
just can't afford to live in California. The best we
could do is get an apartment for twenty five hundred
dollars a month, and it was just too expensive and
they didn't want to be house poor. So they moved
to Texas and tore our heart out, really honestly, and
we we found ourselves sitting in California at home. We
(01:47):
still have a son who was in California. We found
one day we found ourselves sitting there, going, what are
we doing here? We have a grandson in Houston, and
we kind of, you know, we love California, the beauty,
the weather. It's kind of how there's very few places
in the entire world you're going to get that kind
of beauty and weather and stuff. And we thought it's
(02:07):
the best at both worlds. We moved to Texas. We
have a lot more freedom than we have in California.
We can save a lot more money before we retire,
and we get to see our grandkids every single day.
So a few years ago we decided to to move
and you know, I find people are nice everywhere you live.
(02:27):
You could, you know, I think it's where you focus on.
There's good people everywhere, but there's a it's a level
of niceness in Texas. The people that kind of struck
us as soon as we moved here. It's almost like,
why are you so nice to us? What's your agenda?
And it's it's a different kind of nice. And so
(02:48):
that kind of niceness we recognized everywhere. Yes they're no here, yes, ma'am, No, ma'am.
And there's and the people at wherever where you go
are just a different level of nice. So right around
February twenty twenty one, somewhere in there, twenty twenty one,
it was a historic storm here in Texas. Fifteen degrees
are below closer to zero a couple days for a
(03:11):
whole week, and Texas is just not built for that.
When I live in Chicago, they had snowplows, they had
salt for the roads. Here they're not built for They
don't have that kind of stuff because it's rarely that cold.
Usually maybe gets down to thirty degrees. Power was going
out for four days off and on every couple hours.
It was out hardest powers when the water went out,
(03:33):
because you're you start thinking to yourself, Okay, this is
getting real. Now how long is this water going to
be out? Is this a day, two days, three days
a week?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Could you start thinking these stories of people don't have
water for a month. So in between that, we had
snow on one of the days. And when you get
some snow that goes over the ice, it makes it
a little bit more easy traction wise, because we didn't
want to drive anywhere. The roads were literally impassable. You
couldn't go anywhere. You could even walk on the roads,
you'd fall down. So we got some snow. So my
(04:03):
wifie said, well we got a little bit of a break.
Let's go to the store. Let's get a few things
for some friends. We decided to drive to a local
store here called AGB. HB is like the dominating grocery
chain in Texas, and so we pulled in. People were
lining up. We got on the line, about fifty people
(04:24):
we made the best were probably outside for about twenty minutes.
Finally the line started moving. We got in the store
and about ten fifteen minutes into shopping, the lights went
out and you literally could hear it go, oh, here
we go again, and so.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
We looked around at each other.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
It's like, well, let's just keep shopping until we're told
not to shop. In the back of my mind, I
kept thinking they're going to come along pretty soon and
make us leave. I was hoping they weren't just going
to kick us out and we have to leave our
stuff there, but I kind of half expected that. So
we shopped for about ten fifteen minutes and my wife
was going to oh, she said, oh, I forgot the bananas.
(05:02):
So we start going that way. That's when one of
the employees came along and said, hey, folks, would you
mind going to the front and we'll get you checked
out as quickly as we can. We have a process
for this, so don't worry. We'll get you out here
as quickly as we can. So of course, we go
up and we get in line. There's probably ten, I
would say ten to twelve people in front of us.
(05:24):
Most of the people had full baskets. Bunch of people
behind us. I don't know, maybe ten twelve. I didn't
really look, but there's a ton. So I thought this
is going to take a long time. Because there was
about fifteen other lines. People going from the front to
the back of the store because everybody's checking out at
the same time. So I'm in my mind. I even
said to deb my wife, I said, well, this is
going to take a long time. Are they going to
(05:44):
get calculators out? What are they going to do? We
weren't sure, so I thought, well, maybe we're just waiting
for the power to kick back in and maybe they
have a generator. So maybe ten twenty minutes somewhere in
there went by.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
We didn't. We barely moved.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I don't even know if we moved up one cart,
and then all of a sudden, within a few minutes
we started moving. And as we moved up, a woman's
employee says, do you guys have any alcohol? Like looking
at our carts, and I said no, but if you're
giving out drinks, I could use one right now, you know,
just kind of make it fine. I like to have
fun with people. And so within a few minutes, I
(06:17):
mean literally just a couple of minutes, we were ushered
to an open aisle and they waved us over.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
We go over there.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
My wife starts putting stuff on the canor belt and
the woman said, oh, don't put anything up there, we
won't be able to bag anything today. So I thought
it was kind of weird, Okay, So we pushed our
car to the end and she looked at us, looked
at our groceries and kind of motioned with her arm
like go home and be safe, you know, drive home safe.
(06:44):
And we looked at her like I even said, who,
how do we pay? And as I'm saying this, I'm
watching all these carts go out the door, and it
kind of hit us like, wow, they're literally sending us
home out asking us who we are, looking at what
we had, counting anything, expecting anything from us, And I
(07:08):
turned to my wife. She's tearing up. It was just
this wonderful gesture of this company. Because we always want
to bash companies that they're all for profit. This company
is literally letting two hundred people walk out of this
store without paying a single dime, without asking who you
voted for, what's your social status, who you are, nothing, because,
(07:32):
quite frankly, because you're a customer. It's just an amazing thing.
So we started leaving and we're like, this is unbelievable.
And we get to the door and there's about eight
to ten of their employees standing there and kind of
greeting us. So it felt like a wedding, like okay,
for everybody, go home, be safe. They're waving at us,
(07:53):
and it became like a festive mood. And I turned
at the edge of the door and I said, oh,
wait a minute, I forgot to fill at Mignon, you know,
And they all busted out laugh and they knew what
it was what I was saying.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Of course, you know, part of you thinks, man, I
should have got to flay Mignon, you know, but of
course we're all laughing about it. And we started getting
the parking lot and it was very hard to maneuver
the carts because of bumps of ice and snow, and
without bags in the carts, stuff started falling out of
people's carts and.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
You could see everybody helping each other.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Holding on to other people's carts in front of behind them,
helping them. And we all do this every day, but
in that moment, it felt like I want to do
even more. It's just, you know, giving that that act
when someone gives you an act of kindness and generosity
for no reason. First, you feel, I don't know, a
little guilty because I never felt entitled, but I felt
(08:47):
a little not guilty. I don't know what the right
word is, but he felt like, Wow, we didn't deserve that.
Can I give to somebody else who made who they
need help?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You know?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
So with that in mind, I got back to my car.
We started driving home. We were talking about, Wow, you
don't see that every day, you know, a store like
HGB just did that for its customers. So I told
my wife, I said, I'm going to write about this
story and I'm going to post it on Facebook and
just share with a few of my friends.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And you've been listening to Tim Hennessy tell the story
of an experience in a grocery store when we come
back to Texans here on our American Stories and we
(09:39):
continue with our American stories. And when we last left off,
Tim Hennessy was about to post his experience in that
grocery chain on Facebook, and let's pick up what's him.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
This last year, we've gotten bombarded with nothing but bad news,
and maybe even the last decade or two, it just
seemed like we get more and more bad news because
I just saw that as this is the America that
I know and love, and that's what I was going
to tell the story. This is the America I know
and love, not the stuff you see in the newspaper,
(10:11):
on the news all day, you know, all the time.
So and my wife was thinking about it for a second.
She said, why don't you just call it the heart
of America? And I just liked what she said. It
just hit me at I said, you know what, that's
what I'm going to call it because it kind of
is more succinct.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
This is the heart of America. It truly is.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
So then she said, you know, I took tim I
took a picture and I said you did. She goes, yeah,
I didn't really want people to know who's taking it,
and she said, I just want. Through her tears, she said,
I'm I just captured that moment for us. It was
just a unique thing to see. I said, well, send
me that picture. I'll include that with the post. And
I literally just wrote it. I actually gave it to
(10:52):
my wife in a word document. She's my editor. Because
I'm not the best speller. I hate to admit that
I read voraciously, but I and that spell for nothing.
Thank you God for a spell check, Like the word
separate forget it. I put an EAI. I don't know
if it's e in the middle aar. Anyway, I'm getting
off topic here, so she's edited for me and I
(11:14):
just posted it and then I think our power went
out again a little while later, and then we woke
up on Wednesday after I posted it, and then sometime
in the middle of the day, I thought, well, we
checked my Facebook post just to see, if you know,
a couple hundred my friends what they thought of that story.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And I thought, oh my, how does this happen?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
At that time, it was like twelve or thirteen thousand shares,
a couple thousand comments, and probably ten thousand likes, And
I'm like, oh, I don't have that many friends.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
How does this happen? How does this happen?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
And I actually called a friend of my daughters who
works for Facebook, and I said, Jesse, what the heck?
And she says him, what the heck? I said, well,
you're supposed to you're the expert. Don't tell me what
the heck? How does this happen? And she said, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Tim.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I think the story hit a nerve at the right time.
I think people needed to hear good news through all this.
So then then I got worried. Okay, I did not
expect this to go like this. I was literally sharing
with a few friends.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
So I got worried.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
So I called the store said have you heard about
a Facebook post about your store going viral? He goes, yes,
we did. I said, is it okay? And it was
a manager. I asked for it, and I said is
it okay? Because I didn't really I didn't know this
was going to happen. I didn't want to get anybody
in trouble. He said, no, it's all good, sir. I
got the impression without him saying that that is a
(12:47):
very positive thing for that store.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
So, but I wanted to call their corporate office too,
for a couple of reasons. One I wanted to double
check that it was okay, and two I wanted to
find out what their chair were. And so I got
a whold of somebody there and they said the local
food Bank is one of their charities, and also they
directed me to their website, and she also mentioned this
(13:11):
place called Lady Lodge. It's a family Christian based camp
where people go and the donations help pay for families
who can't afford it, and there's no cell service or internet.
It's literally you're going camping and it's a few hours
away from us here in Texas. And so my wife
and I wrote checks to both of them for more
than what we would have paid in groceries, because we
(13:31):
felt like this was such a great gesture. It was
our way of giving back somehow, right. But the next
day that story just kept getting bigger and bigger, and
it was over thirty thousand shares, thirty two hundred comments,
more likes than I could ever count. And then the
phone started ringing. I got text messages, email messages, direct
(13:53):
messages from various news organizations, CNN, Watching Post, Fox News, NBC,
People Magazine, basically who's who of media. And then I
still got a little bit nervous about it because I thought, well,
I don't want this company. This is a very private company,
very humble company. They do a lot for the community.
(14:15):
HIV there's a lot. They're almost always wheneber there's a disaster.
They're almost always the first there for water or food supplies.
They're very generous company in Texas, family oriented. And so
I called them one more time. I said, you know,
I've been doing these interviews. I don't know if anybody
saw it, But have somebody call me back and let
me know if you want me to continue or stop,
(14:38):
because I'll stop today because it's not about me. I
just wanted to not necessarily promote the store, but just
to show the goodness that there is in this country,
because there's a lot of good things in this country.
We see it every single day. We see it all
across this country. We see it in our neighborhoods. How
many of us go out every day we help somebody,
(15:00):
But it doesn't make the news because that's what that's
what we're supposed to do. That's what God wants us
to do. That's why we're here. We're here to be
good to each other.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
And so they called me back, one of their corporate
spokespeople call me back. I don't know if it's the
next day or that same day, I can't remember. And
we talked for about a half hour on the phone,
and he said, Tim, he goes, let me just tell
you something. He goes, We're not going to stop what
you're doing. We love what you're doing. When we're getting
a lot of phone calls right now about if that
(15:31):
story is true or not, and all we do is
tell them, yes, it happened. Then that's as far as
they go. And basically, because they don't want to toot
their own horn. They could easily they could easily point
to their back and go, look at the name of
my back of my jersey. This is a GB aren't
we great? But that's not what they want to do.
(15:51):
That's how great of a company they are. Oh, I
wanted to add one more thing. So and this is
for my wife's I have to give her credit. This
is my wife, Debbie. I have to give her credit
for this because.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
This is her.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
She says this all the time, and that's why she
took that picture too. She says this following phrase. God
only needs a moment, right, God only needs a moment?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And and and.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The phrase that I one of my favorite quotes that
I kind of live my life by is from Albert Einstein,
and it goes like this, live your life is if
there are no miracles, or everything is a miracle. I
probably boss that quote will be nervous right now, but
so I live it as if everything's a miracle. And
(16:47):
when you look for good things, you look for the
miracles in life. It may seem silly to go, Wow,
you think it's a miracle. This guy let everything, these
people walk out the store. I think it is. That's
why we look or the moments. And again I got
to give my wife credit for a God only needs
a moment. You look for these these things. You see
him everywhere. They don't get reported all the time, but
(17:09):
we see him. And I'll give you an example of
another moment or a miracle happened during the same week
I saw this story. It was in San Antonio, Texas.
I believe it was a seven eleven and there's either
the owner or the manager who wrote this on Twitter.
And she went to her store one morning and all
(17:33):
the water that's left out outside on Palletts was missing.
She said, over one hundred cases of water we're missing.
And she thought, well, I guess people needed water because
we're having issues. So she understood it, and she goes
to open the door of the seven eleven and they're
(17:53):
on the floor was six hundred and twenty dollars in
all kind of different denominational bills. So in other words,
it wasn't just one person who just put in six
hundred twenty dollars.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
They put they slid through the slit of.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
The door, not like a mail slot, you know, like
some doors a mail the slit of the door. They
slid in six hundred and twenty dollars in ones, twos, tens, twenties,
and there's a picture of it. That is a miracle. Right,
So we see these all over the place. And I'll
give you a couple other examples. I don't know if
it's a great example, but in my neighborhood and probably
(18:29):
all across Texas, people were out walking driving when we
could going house to house checking on people.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Did you know you could melt snow and ice to
flush to put in the back of your troldt to flush.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
You I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Okay, great, And we see this everywhere all over this country.
Like I said, thousand times a day. How many times
have you heard of a police officer and this happens
all the time. Maybe somebody stand in front of them,
doesn't have enough money to pay for their food or whatever,
and that officer, they're not gonna make the most money
in the world, will take out their own money and
pay for that.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Every once in a will we hear that story. But that
happens all the time, those kind of things, So miracles
do happen every single day. This world is a miracle,
and we're all here, and the sun rise every day
and sets every day. We take it for granted, but
that's still a miracle.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
When I go turn the lights on now, I think
twice about it, because we didn't have it for a
few days. When I turned a faucet on, I think
twice about it now. A week ago it was like
not even in your mind. Those are miracles if you
think about it that way. That some waters come from
some plant, it's treated. The electricity is coming from someplace.
(19:44):
It comes into my place and it gives me light,
gives me the power of my refrigerator, my TV, my stove,
all these things. We take it for granted. We have
delegated so many things in our lives. Is just mundane.
But they're miracles.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And you've been listening to ten Hennessy The Heart of America,
a story of the Hennessy family and H. E. B.
A grocery chain that wanted nothing, no credit, no adulation.
They just did the right thing. This great story here
on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.